Insight

[AArdvark]

This is an excerpt from one of William Gibson's sci-fi novels. Thought it was poignant.



Looking past the display, she could see a lot of old hardware side by side on shelves, most of it in that grubby beige plastic. Why had people, for the first twenty years of computing, cased everything in that? Anything digital, from that century it was pretty much guaranteed to be that sad-ass institutional beige, unless they'd wanted it to look more dramatic, more cutting edge, in which case they'd opted for black. But mostly this old stuff was folded in nameless shades of next-to-nothing, nondescript sort-of-tan.
"This is buggered," sighed Tessa, who'd finished her sandwich and gone back to poking at God's Little Toy with the driver. She stuck out her hand, offering Chevette the driver. "Give it back to him, okay?"
"Who?"
"The sumo guy inside"
Chevette took the little micro-torque tool and went into Bad Sector.
There was a Chinese kid behind the counter who looked like he might weigh in somewhere over two hundred pounds. He had that big pumpkin head the sumo guys had too, but his was recently shaven and he had a soul patch. He had a short-sleeve print shirt on, big tropical flowers, and a conical spike of blue Lucite through the lobe of his left ear. He was standing, behind a counter, in front of a wall covered with dog-eared posters advertising extinct game platforms.
"This your driver, right?"
"She have any luck with it?" He made no move to take it.
. She pointed at the beige hardware. "How come this old shit is always that same color?"
His forehead creased. "There are two theories. One is that it was to help people in the workplace be more comfortable with radically new technologies that would eventually result in the mutation or extinction of the workplace. Hence the almost universal choice, by the manufacturers, of a shade of plastic most often encountered in downscale condoms." He smirked at Chevette.
"Yeah? What's two?"
"That the people who were designing the stuff were unconsciously terrified of their own product, and in order not to scare themselves, kept it looking as unexciting as possible. Literally 'plain vanilla,' you follow me?"
"So who's into this old stuff? Collectors?"
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
"Well?"
"Programmers."
"I don't get it," Chevette said.
"Consider, that when this stuff was new, when they were writing multi-million-line software, the unspoken assumption was that in twenty years that software would have been completely replaced by some better, more evolved version."
He took the driver and gestured with it toward the hardware on the shelves. "But the manufacturers were surprised to discover that there was this perverse but powerful resistance to spending tens of millions of dollars to replace existing software, let alone hardware, plus retraining possibly thousands of employees. Follow me?" He raised the driver, sighting down its shaft at her.
"Okay," Chevette said.
"So when you need the stuff to do new things, or to do old things better, do you write new stuff, from the ground up, or do you patch the old stuff?"
"Patch the old?"
"You got it. Overlay new routines. As the machines got faster, it didn't matter if a routine went through three hundred steps when it could actually be done in three steps. It all happens in a fraction of a second anyway, so who cares?"
"Okay," Chevette said, "so who does care?"
"Smart cookies," he said and scratched his soul patch with the tip of the driver. "Because they understand that all that really happens, these days, is that ancient software is continually encrusted with overlays, to the point where it's literally impossible for any one programmer to fully understand how any given solution is arrived at."
"I still don't see why this stuff would be any help."
"Well, actually," he said, "you're right." He winked at her. "You got it, girl. But the fact remains that there are some very smart people who like to have this stuff around, maybe just to remind themselves where it all comes from and how, really, all any of us do, these days, is just fixes. Nothing new under the sun, you know?"

[Vitriola]

I forget who it was, but in a sci-fi novel I read, which was the prequel to another one I read, the protagonist, who was originally from an earlier time, had died, and was reconstructed, gets rid of the evil alien race that wants to take over the spider race with the knowledge that new technology was just old technology with a multitude of layers. Jesus, who the fuck wrote that? It's very famous...

Another book of his was about the dog race.

[bruce]

I forget who it was, but in a sci-fi novel I read, which was the prequel to another one I read, the protagonist, who was originally from an earlier time, had died, and was reconstructed, gets rid of the evil alien race that wants to take over the spider race with the knowledge that new technology was just old technology with a multitude of layers. Jesus, who the fuck wrote that? It's very famous...

Another book of his was about the dog race.

Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.

Bruce

[Vitriola]

Yeah, I actually remembered that name last night in the middle of the Ozzy/Rob Zombie show.

Huh, I thought Ozzy would suck, but got a free tic so I went. Not bad, he's quite good on stage. Too bad I just happen to dislike most Ozzy songs.

[bruce]

Yeah, I actually remembered that name last night in the middle of the Ozzy/Rob Zombie show.

Huh, I thought Ozzy would suck, but got a free tic so I went. Not bad, he's quite good on stage. Too bad I just happen to dislike most Ozzy songs.

That was exactly my experience at the first Ozzfest. I had a great time, and I really didn't expect to.

Bruce